


Retribution

by vinegardog



Category: Farscape
Genre: Angst, Dark, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 01:32:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3362831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinegardog/pseuds/vinegardog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Revenge is the only way to go</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retribution

Characters are not mine.

Rated – PG 13 for darkness.

Word Count: 1960 approx.

Warning: This is pretty dark with no let up or happy ending. I hate writing angst (no idea why I even attempt it) but I could not see any other outcome once I chose this character to resurrect for the challenge given.

Setting: Into the Lion’s Den Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing and about 2 cycles after PKWars. No major spoilers.

Thanks to A Damned Scientist for the beta (even though he had to go to his happy place after it) and to MarieYotz for always lending an ear.

**Retribution (PG-13)**

Skin blistering, face distorted in a rictus of pain, she crawled down the collapsing corridors of the Command Carrier. Evacuation sirens blared, deafening and unrelenting. Acrid smoke billowed all around and filled her screaming lungs. Falling debris hit her back, her legs, the back of her head but she barely felt it: her body was shutting down, almost too far gone to register the worst of the impacts.

She had no idea where she was crawling to or why. Her home, her comrades, her life, everything she had known and loved was disintegrating around her. She knew that it was over. Even if she managed somehow to get out of this nightmare alive, her flying days, her career, everything she had strived for was over. Her burnt flesh would forever stop her from living a normal life.

And yet something deep inside of her pushed her forward: part of it training, part of it deep seated survival instinct, most of it hatred. More than anything else, searing white hot hatred born of betrayal and loss and incomprehension fuelled her will to carry on and live.

She would crawl and survive so that she could find the traitor that had hurt her, abandoned her. The traitor who was now also responsible for the destruction of everything else she had ever loved. No matter how hard she tried she could not fathom how anybody could change so radically in such a short time, how a Sebacean – a born Peacekeeper! - could turn on all of them and willingly risk the lives of over 50,000 of her own people by aiding the destruction of an entire Command Carrier. She could not comprehend how her closest friend and ally since the time they were young cadets trying to survive and rise through the ranks to become officers could choose aliens – inferior, despicable aliens – over her and everything they had shared.

Maybe she deserved this - what was happening to her - for having let herself love such a worthless person. Maybe this was her punishment for her past gullibility, for putting her trust in the hands of such a monster.

Muscles and tendons contracted making movement almost impossible as her body slowly succumbed to the devastating damage inflicted by the explosion that had engulfed her less than a quarter of an arn earlier.

Finally her crawling came to a stop.

She half reclined, half slumped against a bulkhead and, in spite of her fanciful dreams of revenge, she gave up and waited for death to come claim her.

Through her one functioning eye left, she saw feet and legs running by, people scrambling for their lives towards the docking bays and the evacuation pods, all too concerned about their own safety to worry or even notice one among the many crumpled, half charred bodies scattering the corridors.

‘It is as it should be.’ She thought to herself and willed her comrades on to save themselves.

It was too late for her, even hatred could no longer sustain her. She would have liked at least to be given the chance to end her life with dignity, the way any pilot’s should end: in her prowler - one with her ship – flying into the cold but comforting emptiness of space.

But she would not even get that now.

*******

Despite the increasing darkness caused by the progressive dimming of the emergency lights and the thickening smoke, the fleeing Traskan’s eyes came to rest on the apparently inanimate figure slumped against the bulkhead. She had passed many a body on her escape route to the pods, but none of them had shown any signs of life. She had flitted from one to the other and moved on past all of them as they were now just but corpses well beyond her help. But this one, this one was different. She had seen this one twitch imperceptibly, she was almost sure of it. And yes, there it was again: the very slight, shallow movement of a chest rising and falling in laboured breathing.

The old Traskan healer crouched by the charred form. By the looks of the remaining clothing and the slight swelling of breasts underneath, she assumed that less than an arn earlier this had been a Peacekeeper female. It did not matter to her who she might have been; all that mattered was that the woman was at death’s door and in dire need of her help. She gently took one of the woman’s wrists in her hand and with a pleased mutter at the feel of the faint beating of a heart under her fingers, she opened the cloth bundle full of potions she had been carrying and started frantically working to save a life.

Ignoring the groans of the enormous Carrier now in the final throes of death, the Traskan healer talked to herself - third eye wide open and glowing red - and applied salves, administered powders and chanted for the soul of the young woman under her ministrations.

When she was satisfied that the girl would live, she stood and stepped into the centre of the Carrier’s corridor, stopped one of the last fleeing Peacekeepers officers bringing up the rear of the evacuating masses and with an imperious voice impossible to ignore ordered him to pick up the injured body she had been attending to and carry it along with him to safety.

****

When she woke up, she found herself lying down on a bench on an evacuation pod. She had no idea how she might have gotten there.

She vaguely remembered gentle hands moving over her person, a chanting voice whispering close to her ears and kind whispered reassurances. She remembered strong arms lifting her and then darkness… until now.

With an immense effort, she lifted her head and took in with her one good eye the sight of people huddled all around. She heard children quietly crying and voices shushing them and soothing them as the survivors were ferried to safety.

Agony still coursed through her in nauseating waves but she could breathe freer now and the bandages that covered her flesh, moist with some sort of liniment, were making the pain if not acceptable, at least bearable

She lay back down and fell into the oblivion of sleep.

*****

It was market weeken in the town of Mem’phis.

Crowds from the surrounding villages and farms came to sell their produce, buy provisions, catch up on local events and socialise. On occasion, visitors from passing spaceships would dock their pods and get some planetary downtime for a solar day or two in the pleasant and welcoming surroundings of this well-known and friendly town on this peaceful planet in the heart of the Uncharted Territories.

Today was such a day, visitors from space had arrived early in the morning and purchased plenty of provisions for their ship, a Leviathan, now orbiting the planet waiting patiently for the crew’s return at the end of their day of well-deserved shore leave.

People tended to be generous with both money and food on market week, so every monen during these festival days, plenty of derelicts and paupers converged on the town from places far and close in the hope of receiving enough hand-outs to survive another day.

It had been almost three cycles since the fateful day when the Peacekeeper Command Carrier had imploded in on itself.

Three whole cycles during which Henta, disfigured beyond recognition, crippled and living in constant pain, had managed to survive only on the charity of strangers. Strangers who would sooner part with a kretmar or two or with some food than letting their eyes linger for too long on the burnt wreck extending her gnarled, begging hand towards them. Their eyes would skim over her and quickly be diverted, horror and pity the two main battling emotions she had gotten used to seeing on a daily basis. She had encountered those emotions so often that their sight no longer hurt her. She had hardened and become indifferent. She had had to, to survive.

This was her life now – a very different one from the one back in the days of being a proud Peacekeeper and decorated prowler pilot. To make sense of it, she daily told herself that there must be a reason why she had been saved on that accursed day her life had changed forever. Daily she repeated to herself like a mantra that there had to be a reason why every day for three cycles she had woken up to cope with pain and humiliation. There just had to be a reason for it all or her suffering would have been in vain and she could not – would not! - accept that that could be the case. It was just too cruel a notion to contemplate.

And here it finally was. On this sunny, clear day the reason had finally revealed itself. Simply, without warning or fanfare.

It had started like any other festival day. She had woken up, dressed, eaten a meagre breakfast and managed to get free passage on the back of a cart headed to the town centre where she would start the soul-destroying process of scrounging enough food and money for survival. And all of a sudden, just like that, they had appeared in front of her, like a gift from the heavens. She had blinked twice to make sure she was not hallucinating but, no, they really were there, right in front of her, and all had finally become clear, everything had fallen into place.

They were strolling through the market, perusing the goods on display, talking to the stall owners, smiling, relaxed, healthy looking and fit. A Sebacean woman, a man who looked like a Sebacean but who, Henta knew, was not, and with them what appeared to be their two cycle old hybrid bastard spawn: a chubby, blue-eyed, black-haired child with dimples in his smiling cheeks.

She followed them, unseen or unnoticed. She observed them for more than a quarter arn. They looked happy. And their happiness burnt a tattoo of renewed hatred on her soul.

The parents were each holding one of the child’s pudgy hands and while walking along they would in rhythmic unison swing the child forward off his feet in a parody of flight. His giggling laughter would erupt at the apex of every swing. Joy was written all over his face and that same joy was in turn reflected in the doting eyes of his sires. Passers-by could not help but smile at the sight of the happy trio and at the infectious pealing laughter of the boy, but not Henta. All Henta could see was the unfairness of it all. All Henta could hear was the deafening roar of blinding anger. All Henta could feel was the primordial need to exact revenge. Revenge for herself and for all her comrades who had suffered from the treachery of her one-time friend.

She managed to slink ahead of them and crouched in wait in the shadow of an alleyway.

She primed her pulse pistol - the only remnant of her Peacekeeper past- found a comfortable position and steadied her hand and ragged breathing.

Revenge would not take away her daily pain, the loss of her dreams, the torment that every arn had become. She knew that, but she didn’t care.

She also knew that killing Aeryn Sun or that abomination she had chosen as a mate above all others, or even killing both of them, would be too merciful. It just wasn’t enough; she wanted them to suffer for the rest of their abhorrent lives in the same way she had been condemned to suffer for the duration of hers. Nothing less would suffice.

She took aim with her one remaining good eye, the hybrid child held firmly in her sights as the family of three, oblivious of the threat lying in wait, slowly approached her position.

Ex-Peacekeeper Officer Henta Yal took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger.

A shot rang out in the Mem’phis sky.

 

The End


End file.
